The Mind Museum: A post-Christmas visit to the science & technology museum at The Fort.

Ever since the Mind Museum in Taguig City opened in 2012, it’s been on my list of places to visit with Motito. The museum sits on 1.2 hectares (3.0) acres of prime property in the business district of Bonifacio Global City (also known as Fort Bonifacio or The Fort). Three years of waiting for Motito’s school to schedule a field trip to the Mind Museum proved fruitless. Alternatively I was daunted by the prospect of taking public transport, and enduring the soul-sapping traffic, to BGC. Our Mind Museum moment finally came after I happened to see the museum’s newspaper ad announcing that it would be open during the interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Post-Christmas traffic in Metro Manila was practically non-existent, so we reached the museum in Fort Bonifacio from our home in Makati City (near the Manila border) in 15 minutes via taxicab. I’d purchased my ticket online at the teachers’ rate (P190 instead of P625 for an adult), while paying for my son’s at the regular rate for private school students (P475). (Hint: Check out Metrodeal.com for discounted all-day passes to the Mind Museum). There were only a handful of people inside when we stepped in at 9:30AM, which meant we would have the exhibits to ourselves before the museum started to fill up.

The Mind Museum has over 250 interactive exhibits organized into five main galleries that center on specific themes: Atom, Earth, Life, Universe and Technology. In addition to the permanent exhibits, the museum hosts traveling exhibitions and demonstrations aimed at showing kids that science is not all nerdy stuff and that it can be quite cool. At the time of writing, the museum was hosting “Frozen Science Saturdays: Cool Fun With Liquid Nitrogen” and “High on Sci-Fi: The Science Behind Science Fiction Movies.” Immersive audio-visual presentations about the birth of the Universe, the race to return to the moon, and the natural history of the Philippines are shown at regular intervals at the museum’s teaching planetarium and mini-theater.

The Mind Musem encourages visitors to explore the exhibits at their own pace, so don’t expect museum staff to come to your aid when you require explanation about how a van de Graaf generator works or are curious about the potential applications of the four newly discovered elements. The museum gift shop sells souvenirs and all sorts of educational stuff, from Legos to microscopes. A science-themed outdoor park features play spaces with clever names like the Brachistochrone slides or the Mobius Wall Climber, while a koi pond is utilized to demonstrate the Aquatic Nitrogen Cycle.

We had an enriching experience overall, in spite of some of the exhibits not working (the Hologram would’ve been really cool). If you’re considering paying the Mind Museum a visit, I suggest you spring for the All-Day Pass as it will allow you ample time to explore the museum at your leisure and see all the shows and films scheduled for the day. Otherwise, you could buy tickets online for any of the three-hour slots: 9:00AM-12NN, 12NN-3PM, and 3PM-6PM. The museum is closed on Mondays.